Nathanaelle Ravez (00: 00.24)

Nathanaelle Ravez (00: Posting interactive events, facilitating engaging workshops, creating virtual experiences rather than just having participants attend them. That's what Said Sadouk helps you do.

Nathanaelle Ravez (00: by creating truly engaging remote experiences, using the right tools and even enjoying the technical stuff that scares so much of us. He's known as the Facilitainer. What a perfect name, combining facilitation and entertainment. But above all, I really value this generous and passionate personality who not only shares his knowledge on LinkedIn, but also in communities like Bratta. With him, virtual experiences

Nathanaelle Ravez (00: experiences go beyond the ordinary. I'm so happy to welcome Saeed in this episode and that you'll learn more about his path as a freelancer and his passion for what he does. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Let's go! We are live and I'm super super super super happy to welcome my friend, my peer in the better community Saeed Sadouk.

Nathanaelle Ravez (00: who is also known and called himself as the Facilitainer. I'm sure that some of you have seen all the magical things he's doing on his LinkedIn profile. If you don't, stay tuned because he's really an amazing guy doing a lot of funny things in his virtual sessions which made...

Nathanaelle Ravez (02: 17.71)

Nathanaelle Ravez (02: me curious as a facilitator to know how he's doing this. So welcome, Sain. Hi. Hi Nati. Great to be here. I was looking forward to our recorded conversation. It's not the first time we speak, but this time it is recorded and for public. So let's see how this turns out. Yeah. It's funny because normally we speak in German when we talk together. So it's like we have to switch.

Nathanaelle Ravez (02: Totally fine and it's always, let's talk for five minutes and then it's one and a half hours. Exactly, each time. So Saeed, you're with me in the Bata community. You are also teaching how to make creative and interesting and powerful virtual sessions. You are not...

Nathanaelle Ravez (02: Exactly, a facilitator. But you're a big, big support for facilitators. But before we dive into all the things you are doing, could you tell our listeners a little bit about your background and what you've done so far? I worked in the company for a relatively long time. When I was in the customer service, I did...

Nathanaelle Ravez (02: trainings and quality management and among other things, we're just making sure that our employees are trained well enough and deliver great quality for our customers, the communication company. So this was the main thing. And then shortly before the pandemic started, we got acquired to our company, which was more local.

Nathanaelle Ravez (02: or product in Germany was acquired by a very, very big company. And then things just started to change. It's just different culture, new people, new tasks, everything was a little bit messy. Plus it was in the middle of the pandemic. This was on top, which added a lot. And yeah, and this is also where we all started to...

Nathanaelle Ravez (04: 42.798)

Nathanaelle Ravez (04: We were forced to do virtual conferences. We tried to figure out what Microsoft Teams is and how it works and working from home. So was new to everyone in the company and in the world, of course. So a lot of things came together. And that's when I started to just get interested in these things and virtual conferencing itself, of course, in things like streaming, everything that uses a camera and a mic and...

Nathanaelle Ravez (04: communication and as I'm always a curious guy, I try to look for, I don't know, fun things or solutions, how to do things more interesting, less boring, less of a meeting, but more of an event or more... An experience. Yeah, right, experience. Not always entertaining, but non -standard. So, you know, when I hear something like...

Nathanaelle Ravez (04: virtual meeting or zoom meeting or teams, it doesn't matter. It sounds like work. It sounds like PowerPoint. It sounds like boring. We have, we have like 10 different meetings a day. However, um, after a while, um, just had the chance to quit my, uh, my job then without having a plan B, but I know what I was passionate about and what I would like to do. But it took me a very long time to figure out how.

Nathanaelle Ravez (04: how to turn this. Things I just, yeah, things I like to do, things I do for fun. I think I would even do for free. But there are also people who see a lot of benefit in these because they have the same thought. Okay, this is boring. I've done a thousand Zoom calls in the last year and they all look the same. And there are so many opportunities to spice them a little bit up. So that's where my very short.

Nathanaelle Ravez (04: journey ends my, to make it my, my mission and my goal to support others who want to spice up their trainings, their workshops, their meetings, their events with something that probably don't even know existed or can be done, sometimes with small things. Yeah. And that's where I can come into uplift others. It's not about.

Nathanaelle Ravez (07: 07.522)

Nathanaelle Ravez (07: me getting better in facilitation, I gave up on this some time ago. But my helping others is probably the best way for me, the thing I feel most comfortable with and have the most fun with. And I think why not creating myself a job and a business and around. Become the facilitator. Right. And become the facilitator.

Nathanaelle Ravez (07: which is just, by the way, a mix of facilitation and entertainment. Although I said it's not about entertainment, but it's more about making things interesting or wanting people to join, or making people want to join. It's not about having a clown or somebody telling jokes the whole time. That's not what I mean by entertainment. It's just adding a layer of this is not unusual.

Nathanaelle Ravez (07: Zoom call. Yeah. I hear, what I hear is that you quit without any plan B and you took for yourself a while to try things out and to, yeah, to figure out what you want to do. How was it in this time? Because I did the same and I know a lot of people reaching out who are doing the same.

Nathanaelle Ravez (07: Like I quit my job and now I don't know what to do. What would you be your advice to these people or what was your experience until you figured it out? So for me, the reason I quit is because I knew what I don't want to do anymore. You know, when you wake up in the morning, oh my God, I have to work today or I have to, and you really, really don't want to, and it makes you kind of sick when you think about it. I think that's the...

Nathanaelle Ravez (07: point where I came from. It's not about, okay, I want to do something better. It's just, okay, this is just not for me. And I don't know if I can take it another year. And of course, it's no offense to nobody. It was during the pandemic, so it was difficult on top. It was during the lockdown. So we all had our mental issues to deal with and isolation and things with which all came together. But I just figured it all for myself. Okay, this is not what I want to do for the rest of my...

Nathanaelle Ravez (09: 33.198)

Nathanaelle Ravez (09: life, not even for the next six months. So, and I just had the chance to quit. It was made a little bit easy for me. Yeah. And I think having a plan is probably better. So having kind of a vision or kind of a plan, okay, this is what I want to do and I want to work towards it or I want to get better in the thing so I can become whatever I want to become in.

Nathanaelle Ravez (09: in a year or so, don't having any idea at all can be, this can be very hard. It was hard because for me, I don't know, maybe take me a year, more than a year, a year and a half to just figure out, okay, what is it I want to do? I know what I don't want to do, but of course you also need the other side. Okay, what is it that I want to do? So yeah.

Nathanaelle Ravez (09: I don't have an advice because everybody comes from a different background and a different situation. But if you're thinking about quitting, if you have a good job and you're thinking about quitting it to do something else and put some thought in what is the other thing I want to do and not quitting first and then thinking about, okay, what could I do? Yeah. But you did in this last year,

Nathanaelle Ravez (09: a lot of things you tried a lot of things out. You joined, for example, the core community of Bata, which makes sense because Bata is a platform for visual and remote sessions. So it makes completely sense that you were here. So you took actions actually, even if you were about looking what I want to do, you were doing things to figure out.

Nathanaelle Ravez (09: Unconsciously, yes, during this period of not knowing what to do, I just found the time to do things that I like, to entertain myself, to learn new things. It's not about, okay, I want to learn how this thing works. It's more about organically seeing something and then trying it out and then thinking about other ways.

Nathanaelle Ravez (11: 59.95)

Nathanaelle Ravez (11: To do it, I gained a lot of skills that I use today. I don't know how many YouTube videos and things, you know. Again, if you're in a lockdown, you have a lot of time to... Once you are through all the series and movies on Netflix, you try to find other things to entertain yourself. So I really, really learned a lot of things and I got a lot of inspiration. I had a lot of...

Nathanaelle Ravez (11: time and occasions to try out things and experiment and most of the things I did, I always share them. So when I do something, sometimes I do things just to try them out if they work and then put them out there to share knowledge or entertain others with whatever I did or created or found out that day to, I don't know, getting feedback or just...

Nathanaelle Ravez (11: To get it, just to get it out there so I can focus on the next thing. Often I create things and put them in the trash. I don't use them anymore. Just for the one showcase, I create something that takes me maybe a week or a day or multiple hours. And then once it's done, it's okay. Next one, it's not created for any purpose for myself, but more for the purpose of doing it. And also for myself, of the...

Nathanaelle Ravez (11: process of creativity, you know, it's like mini projects for myself, starting with a blank canvas and then adding layers to it until we have something where I say, okay, this is a cool thing. Let me share it and see what others think. And turned out others also like it. Yeah. I mean, you reached the 5 ,000 followers on LinkedIn. I think it was the last week or something.

Nathanaelle Ravez (11: When did you start to post on LinkedIn? I have my account for 10 years. I looked it up the other day, I think May 2014, where I signed up for it. And then it took me like nine and a half years to get, I think it was 4 ,000 followers and connections and things. And then the other thousand were like in two and a half months. So just from November to today.

Nathanaelle Ravez (14: 26.154)

Nathanaelle Ravez (14: However, the starting to post, I think my first real post, if I look back, it's maybe two years ago. You had 4 ,000 people two years ago, no? I don't know how many it was, but it was a few hundred, of course. Yeah, yeah. Because it was people you know, people from work and family, the usual suspect. But then, especially when everybody was removed, it was just a great way to...

Nathanaelle Ravez (14: Interact with people to build a network to get to know a lot of people I'm still in contact with. I can call friends, some of them, some of them I didn't know before and met in person had so many virtual coffee chats. If it's not possible, if they live somewhere on the other half of the world, like we two for example. So yeah, but it wasn't that long ago when I start to be.

Nathanaelle Ravez (14: active. However, for me, this is because I don't journal. A lot of people have journal, that's how they process their day and their week. To me, it's more, if I have a thought or something I'm thinking about, this is kind of my journal. Sometimes it's just a bad joke. Sometimes it's something that's useful. Sometimes it's, I don't know, something profound and deep, but this is just where I...

Nathanaelle Ravez (14: get stuff out of my head and yeah, why not? If anybody likes to read it or watch it, why not? Just writing down things for myself doesn't work for me. You did it for fun actually, just with the purpose of sharing and like you said, journaling and stuff like that. But this is a good platform also when you are in and you have a few followers to attract actually.

Nathanaelle Ravez (14: people who are like you and might be potential clients now that you've found what you want to do and what you propose, right? I think that there is a lot of potential, especially on LinkedIn, they the one billion users at like end of last year, which is a seventh or eighth of the whole population on Earth. So it's...

Nathanaelle Ravez (16: 50.638)

Nathanaelle Ravez (16: the largest platform, especially for business. It's not that there isn't enough opportunity. It's more about actually doing it. That's the first thing. And be constant. To be constant comes later. I think the first step is, okay, this is a business and I have product and services, others would pay for and now I have to tell people.

Nathanaelle Ravez (16: They can hire me or they can work with me or I have these certain things that I'm working on. You can be part of and so on. And to me personally, this is, it was a very hard, it still is, but it was, it was a very hard thing to, to do. You know, if you're not used to it and to do promotion for yourself, to do kind of sales, to reach out to people.

Nathanaelle Ravez (16: Even if it's this one post when you write, contact me if you do, oh, this is so hard to do. This is weird. And there is, for me, I talk about this a lot. To me, it's all the things I do, and this is a stupid thing, but I still think like this sometimes. All the things I do, I have so much fun doing them.

Nathanaelle Ravez (16: I feel, often I feel like, guilty to say, okay, I'm doing something that's fun for me and others should, you know, should pay for it or should... This is a weird concept of... I literally would do it for free. I did a lot of things for, most of the things for free for the last one and a half, two years.

Nathanaelle Ravez (16: events, workshops, just to stay in the flow, just to try out things, just to share knowledge with others. But as soon as it becomes professional, for me at least, okay, I could charge for this. Okay, where do I start? And then I start overthinking a lot of things. How do I do it? And what's the perfect way? And what's the right wording? And I don't overthink when I just create and do things.

Nathanaelle Ravez (19: 14.114)

Nathanaelle Ravez (19: Never ever, it's just having fun and then once I'm in the floor and then it's done, but then for some reason, okay, no, it's business and people pay me, they have expectations, you know, and I have higher expectations than they might have.

Nathanaelle Ravez (19: I'm often my, I'm the biggest problem in this equation is myself to just think, okay, this isn't good enough or however. I'm the same. I'm the same. I mean, I love to highlight the others also in these podcasts or when I do things on LinkedIn, but it was hard to make the step to start to highlight also what I can propose and how I can help. So.

Nathanaelle Ravez (19: Are you ready to take the leap and start as a freelance facilitator? Let me ask you something. Are you completely lost not knowing where to start? Or maybe struggling to find clients? This is absolutely normal. I've been mentoring facilitators for the last months and I'm connected with thousands of facilitators around the world who are also dreaming from a life as...

Nathanaelle Ravez (19: freelance facilitator. After helping and guiding individually, I decided to turn my mentorship into boot camps. My goal is to connect you with each other so that you get empowered and not feeling alone on your path and to help you start riding the freelance facilitator wave. In April, we're launching the very first takeoff boot camp. Four weeks.

Nathanaelle Ravez (19: three workshops to enable you to focus on your niche, your clients and your voice. We prepared also wealth of templates to deepen your work between the session on your own business. Seats are limited for this first edition to 10 persons and with a special discount of 40 % from the future price. Why? Because we will ask all the

Nathanaelle Ravez (21: 25.102)

Nathanaelle Ravez (21: participants of the first session to give us feedback so that we can adjust and that we can really meet the needs of the facilitators. So if you are interested, find the waiting list in the show notes. I hope to see you there. I can't wait for it. Will you be one of them? Is it in this time of looking for what you could discover and having fun that you discover Bata?

Nathanaelle Ravez (21: Because you are also in the better community, you are doing a lot of things. I remember, I think Rachel Davis, you had her a few episodes ago on your podcast and John White, they had a workshop, a free workshop, they do this like once a month and it was the first time I attended to this improv sessions in Miro where they just showcase how to create a

Nathanaelle Ravez (21: boards and icebreakers and so on. So just roughly the concept. However, the first time I joined, it was in this new tool. I was used to use Microsoft Teams from work. Never, I think, never really used Zoom before, early during lockdown and so on. And however, the first time I joined, I saw this, I just liked the colors. It was yellow.

Nathanaelle Ravez (21: Okay, this is fun. It's just something that attracts me. I like the way the cameras looked and then we had this little effect and you can share something and share apps and we have all the other elements of reactions and so on. Okay, this is something I haven't seen before. I've seen other things, but not when it comes to virtual conferencing tool. And I just got interested.

Nathanaelle Ravez (21: tried it out myself, found out there is a community you can join and there are a lot of people I already knew and I got to know a lot of people from within the community afterwards. Yeah, so one of my, maybe my favorite community, I'm not in that many communities anymore, but I would say it is my favorite community for a special reason. And this is just something in general.

Nathanaelle Ravez (23: 46.894)

Nathanaelle Ravez (23: This is not a support forum. You have other tools. I don't know. I don't know if they have one, but let's just say you go Zoom. They have probably a support forum. I have trouble with this and this and then somebody answers so I can discuss things. But in this case, it's rarely about this.

Nathanaelle Ravez (23: It's more about sharing knowledge, connecting with people. I learned so many resources. People share about facilitation, about training, about learning and development, about, I don't know, community. Personal growth. Personal growth, community building, about business building. I know there are a lot of freelance facilitators, we just trainers and so on. So if there's any question I have or I struggle with, I can...

Nathanaelle Ravez (23: I post it in the community, which is one thing. That's not the end of the community. I also know I can reach to certain people. Oh, this is maybe something you could just help me with or just listen to whatever my struggle is, or we can just share experiences. It just goes beyond the tool itself. And that's what I... The tool becomes a side effect. I still use the tool, of course, and I use it daily.

Nathanaelle Ravez (23: when I have my one -on -ones with people on my virtual coffees or other things. But it's not about the tool, it's rarely about the tool. So that can also... And even if I want to speak about other tools, nobody would ever say no, that's not allowed here. So that's also a great thing, it's about the people. And one funny thing is, for example, very early on,

Nathanaelle Ravez (23: I had a coffee chat with Jacob, co -founder of the tool. This is funny because I never had a coffee chat with the co -founder of Zoom or Teams or whatever they are called. I don't even know who they are. They don't care about my opinion probably because they are so large and it just makes it different if somebody asks me for feedback or I don't care about.

Nathanaelle Ravez (26: 09.422)

Nathanaelle Ravez (26: things or that when somebody asks facilitators things they would need to make their job better. So it could probably become a feature in the tool. So it's just a great way of taking and giving, that's how we say it in German, at least it's not one way. And I don't have any experiences like this. And...

Nathanaelle Ravez (26: Jacob is very nice. He was also on the podcast and he's always interested what the community is doing. If there is any comments on a LinkedIn post, for example, I had the case shortly that someone commented one of my posts asking for a specific technical...

Nathanaelle Ravez (26: question that I couldn't answer and Jakob answered, everybody's always here to take care of what the users want also. And even if it's not done tomorrow, they are taking notes and they're answering. Yeah. Things take time, but at least being taken serious is one thing. I know if it's up...

Nathanaelle Ravez (26: If you ask every user what they want, I think that you get so many things that don't make sense, but you can put everything into one tool. It wouldn't make sense. Also somebody has to pay it, somebody has to work on it. It's not just like clicking something and then you get new features, but at least I always find it a great thing when, okay, got it, but needs time or it's on our list or I got this a few days ago.

Nathanaelle Ravez (26: Yeah, it's a cost thing. Sounds nice, but it would cost so, I don't know, not a special figure, but it would cost too much to implement this. Peter, okay, this is fine. I understand it and we can move on in the discussion, who am I to tell you what to do with your money. Yeah, but you got an answer. You got an answer and possible, not possible for this reason, it's not possible or whatever. Yeah, right. Yeah. And...

Nathanaelle Ravez (28: 27.118)

Nathanaelle Ravez (28: Let's talk about you and what you are doing because you are my sparing partner when I have struggle with my cameras or building something more interactive with all the tools. I hate it. I just hate it when I have to read and look at a lot of videos. But if I need something, I know there is someone here I can reach out because...

Nathanaelle Ravez (28: You've done all the work, you've looked at all the videos, you are a geek. Right. And this is what you are now doing. So explain, what are you doing? What are the features you are specialist in? First of all, I think I have a lot of interests. There are a lot of things that interest me and that are fun to me.

Nathanaelle Ravez (28: something when something is joy to me or this is a geek thing, you know, like tech brings me joy or certain things. Others may cannot understand it, but to me, this is just something fun to explore and to try out things. But I still do a lot of things. Sometimes it's just for myself to try out things. But if you think...

Nathanaelle Ravez (28: I'm a freelancer. What are the core things that could be services I provide? Who is my target audience? Who is this audience I want to target? Which problem do I solve for whom? These are things I had to think about a very, very long time and it needs help.

Nathanaelle Ravez (28: If it's up to me, I can do a hundred things here, choose and I can teach you, but this is not how it works. So if it's, you can, you cannot solve everybody's problem. That doesn't make any sense. So I, at the moment, back to your question, I'm focusing on not everybody, but people who do virtual sessions in a professional way. So it's kind of, if you're a teacher or if you're a facilitator or if you do workshops in general, or if you are a

Nathanaelle Ravez (30: 52.83)

Nathanaelle Ravez (30: trainer or if you do events, especially virtually. So I'm focused on the gig park, so doing it from home, not leaving the house and doing it remotely. And if you need support in how to do it. The settings. Yeah, correct. That's the difference. And if you want to become a better facilitator, probably I'm not the one to call. To be really honest, and this is not my niche and this is not my comfort zone.

Nathanaelle Ravez (30: doesn't have to be, there are millions of facilitators out there and millions of trainers. But if you already have the skillset, okay, I am a facilitator, I am a trainer, but now I have to do things remotely because we have a global audience or global company, for example, or I have done it for so and so many years, but I would like to learn new things, how to do it. And this is where I come in. So.

Nathanaelle Ravez (30: basically on the tech part and I, at least at the moment, because I want to niche it a little bit down, I train people in how to set up tools like OBS Studio, which is something where you can create all these overlays and different scenes for your camera to use in Zoom, in Teams, in Bata, or wherever you like, or if you want to do a live stream, something like this, how to add.

Nathanaelle Ravez (30: engaging elements, how to add a Q &A, how to... So you would go too far to explain every little thing, but just saying how to use tech to your advantage if you already have the skills of a facilitator, of a trainer, of an educator, but you want to become more virtual and more engaging. And of course, other tools also, but this is just the...

Nathanaelle Ravez (30: the basic concept, how to make your virtual sessions more entertaining and more fun and make them, as you, this was a great intro, how to create experiences and, or virtual experiences rather than having meetings. Nobody wants to join a meeting. We all joined like trainings where you have PowerPoint all the time and somebody is speaking in the top right corner.

Nathanaelle Ravez (33: 18.798)

Nathanaelle Ravez (33: I think if you do something different, even if it's not new and super fancy, it's just different. And you will, I couldn't believe because I'm just in my bubble and I do some, I'm so focused on the stuff I do. How new this can be to a lot of people. There's things where, okay, this is just two clicks for me or it takes me five minutes. Others didn't know that it exists, how to do it, where to start. And then, okay, so they.

Nathanaelle Ravez (33: There is not only a market, but there is just people who have a lot of interest and would like to try it out and maybe need support to know where to start and how to start. And the rest is then up to you. So you're just guiding people through this. And at the moment I'm offering workshops and classes for whoever wants to sign up where we just start from the very beginning. It's about...

Nathanaelle Ravez (33: Installing apps or the right tools and getting them to run, starting with the first simple things. Just show people, okay, this is how it could look like. And if you put, and if you practice and put a little bit of thought into it, you can create your own version of it, your own branding, your own style. And you can put your facilitation skills and your trainer skills combined with a little bit of tech can be something very, very.

Nathanaelle Ravez (33: great and unique. You really have fun by teaching the things so it makes fun to learn it with you. Thank you so much for all this. So we will put of course in the show notes all the upcoming events from you if it's with OBS or with Streamdex or maybe other things which are coming.

Nathanaelle Ravez (33: So thank you very very much. Thanks a lot for inviting me Naty. Thanks for listening. Bye bye. If you haven't already subscribed to Said's LinkedIn channel, I advise you to click on the bell because I guarantee you'll get hooked on your little dose of Said every day. If you want to find out more about his services, the masterclasses, training and coaching he offers,

Nathanaelle Ravez (35: 40.462)

Nathanaelle Ravez (35: Go and explore his website, thefacilitainer .com, and finally, sign up for his newsletter, which promises you pure content. In the next episode, Dr. Jitendra Bonopa, EY partner and business transformation expert who runs EY's innovation hub called WebSpace, does me the great honor of being my guest.

Nathanaelle Ravez (35: Apa, my collaborator who was privileged to be part of our team and I, interviewed her about her background, her views on the role of people in any transformation and about the power of facilitation and facilitators. Until then, I wish you good health, success and of course lots of happiness. Au revoir!